Venue details
Kings Place
Kings Place 90 York Way London N1 9AG
Box Office: kingsplace.co.uk / 020 7520 1490
Kings Place is an open, multi-arts venue, presenting an adventurous and critically-acclaimed programme, with words and music at its heart.
Overview
Tickets available on the door
Access Information
Kings Place has a number of facilities available. Please visit the venue website for further information.
The Song of Songs is some of the most erotic poetry ever written. Originally Hebrew love poetry, it is believed to celebrate the union of the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon.
The Queen of Sheba was all powerful, a mighty leader, wise, wealthy and very beautiful. She briefly appears in the Old Testament, to a larger extent in the Koran and in much greater detail in the Kebra Nagast, the national book of Ethiopia. Her exotism has inspired numerous composers through the centuries not least because these Song of Songs through the advent of Christianity became synonymous with the Virgin Mary.
Their imagery abounds in the 12th-century poetry of the Abbess Hildegard of Bingen and with her music she reveals an exceptional spirituality and grace. The ‘Prince of Music’, Palestrina, produced some of his most sensual music; he even apologised for possessing ‘light and vain ideas’ and indeed ‘blushed and grieved’ at presenting these erotic motets. No such embarrassment prevented the Augustinian nun, Raphaela Aleotta from displaying her prodigious talent.
The programme closes with a tribute to the French composer, Daniel-Lesur, whose 20th anniversary of his death we celebrate this year. His sumptuous setting of verses from the Song of Songs beautifully mirrors the fusion of the erotic and the divine, the sacred and the secular.
PROGRAMME
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Bingen
O filie Israhel (Humility)
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Victoria
Vidi speciosam
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Aleotti
Ego flos campi
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Palestrina
Vineam meam non custodivi
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Victoria
Nigra sum sed formosa
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Palestrina
Pulchrae sunt genae tuas
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John Barber
Song of Songs: (commissioned by the Sixteen in 2014)
I. The Voice of my Beloved
II. By night
III. Love is as Strong as Death -
Bingen
Flos campi (Virtues)
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Aleotti
Surge propera, amica mea
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Palestrina
Quae est ista
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Aleotti
Vidi speciosam
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Palestrina
Descendi in hortum meum
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Papa
Ego flos campi
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Jean-yves Daniel-lesur
Le cantique des Cantiques
PERFORMERS
- The Sixteen
- Harry Christophers conductor